XT Server — User's Manual

XT Server is a desktop application for building, scheduling, and monitoring EDI automation jobs. A job is an ordered list of tasks — copying files, splitting X12 envelopes, transferring documents over FTP, translating EDI files, sending email notifications — that runs automatically on a schedule or on demand.

Contents

1. Getting Started
2. The Main Window
3. Working with Jobs
4. Working with Tasks
5. Scheduling
6. Logs
7. Task Reference
   • Email
   • Execute Program
   • File Copy
   • File Delete
   • File Move
   • File Matcher
   • FTP
   • Pause
   • Log
   • XTranslator 2.x
   • EDI File Split
   • EDI File Copy
   • EDI File Move
8. EDI Concepts
9. Options
10. Tips and Troubleshooting

Getting Started

When XT Server starts it shows the main window with a list of your jobs on the left and their tasks on the right.

Jobs, task definitions, and logs are stored on your computer, so everything survives a restart. You can also mark jobs to auto-start with the application, so your EDI processing is running again right after launch.

The Main Window

The main window has three areas:

• Jobs table (left) — lists all your jobs with their current state (running / stopped).
• Tasks table (right) — lists the tasks of the selected job, in the order they run.
• Log tab (bottom) — shows processing history with filters.

Click on column headers in jobs and logs tables to sort them by specific column.

Drag and drop jobs to arrange them in a different order in the list.

Job buttons

You can also right-click the job list to Add, Clone, Edit, Delete.

Double click job to Edit it.

Task buttons

You can also right-click the task list to Add, Edit, Delete, Cut, Copy, Paste, and Move Up / Move Down tasks.

Drag and drop tasks or use Move Up and Move Down right click menu options to arrange them in the task list.

Double click task to Edit it.

Working with Jobs

Creating a job

1. Click Add Job (or the equivalent new-job button).
2. Enter a Job name. Job names must be unique.
3. Choose options and a schedule (see Scheduling).
4. Add tasks (see Working with Tasks).

Jobs contain tasks.

Think about what jobs you might need when designing the system.

One way to partition jobs is to think about all the EDI file types you have, and have one job per XTranslator map.

Another approach is to have one job per EDI X12 tansaction-release combination.

Your directory structure should reflect planned design, and help you move data in and out of directories while translator and rest of processing runs on the files. Think of how every kind of file will move though the system as it is being worked on.

Sometimes it helps to draw diagram with all the file types routed via File Move or EDI File Move tasks.

Job options

When editing a job you can set:

Importing and exporting jobs

Jobs can be exported to a file and imported on another machine — useful for moving a configuration from a test system to production. A status message confirms where the job was exported or the name it was imported under.

Working with Tasks

A job's tasks run top to bottom, one after another. Reorder them with Move Up / Move Down.

The Add button opens a menu of task types, grouped as:

• General: Email, Execute Program
• File handling: File Copy, File Delete, File Move, File Matcher
• Transfers: FTP
• Utility: Pause, Log
• EDI: XTranslator 2.x, EDI File Split, EDI File Copy, EDI File Move

Each task type opens an editor dialog with its own fields. Common field types include text boxes, checkboxes, directory pickers, file pickers, and drop-down choices. Every task has a short summary line shown in the task list so you can see its configuration at a glance.

Task results matter:

• Most tasks return continue and the job moves to the next task.
• The File Matcher task and an FTP Receive task that finds no files return stop — the job run ends and (for scheduled jobs) restarts on the next scheduled run.
• Errors are logged and, if Stop on error is set, stop the job.

Use right click on job and task to access quick actions.

Drag and drop tasks or use Move Up and Move Down right click menu options to arrange them in the task list.

Scheduling

In the job editor you choose one or more schedule presets from a drop-down and add them to the job's schedule list:

• Every 5, 10, or 30 seconds
• Every minute, 2, 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, or 45 minutes
• Every hour at minute 0 or 30
• Daily at a fixed hour (1 AM through 11 PM, plus midnight)

A job can have multiple schedules; it runs whenever any of them fires. Use the Add and Remove buttons to manage the list.

How the loop works:

• A job with a schedule loops continuously and re-runs its tasks each time the schedule fires.
• A job without a schedule runs its task list once when started manually — handy for one-shot processing jobs.
• Scheduled jobs keep running until you press Stop.

This has important implications: plan your jobs to move files in and out of input and output directories at the start or end of job processing. If files are left in input they will get reprocessed again with possible data duplication in other downstream systems. If files are left in output directory next job run might overwrite them with possible data loss.

Use tasks to move files in and out.

Plan your directory structure. Tasks can be setup in many number of ways depending on your business requirements.

Logs

The Logs tab shows everything your jobs have done, with:

• Job filter — show one job or all jobs
• Task filter — show one task or all tasks
• Search box — filter entries containing your text
• Export — save a job's log to a file (a status message confirms where it was saved)

Log history is limited to a configurable number of entries per job (see Options). Older entries are trimmed automatically, and a copy is also kept as a CSV file next to the log database, so you can open it in a spreadsheet.

Log lines are timestamped so you can correlate each file transfer, split, or translation with a specific scheduled run.

Double click on log entry to copy it's contents to Clipboard. Click on column header to sort logs by specific column.

Task Reference

This section describes every task type in detail.

Email

Use it for: alerting people when something happens — a file arrived, a job failed, or an EDI batch was processed.

Email connections tolerate self-signed certificates on the mail server.

Execute Program

Use it for: calling external programs or scripts as part of a job — e.g. a post-processing script or a custom converter.

The program's completion is awaited before the next task starts.

File Copy

Use it for: copying inbound/outbound files to processing or archive folders.

File Delete

Use it for: cleaning up files after they have been processed. Same fields as File Copy (destination is ignored). Be careful: deleted files are gone.

File Move

Use it for: moving files between folders, e.g. from an input folder to a "processed" folder. Same fields as File Copy. A "move sequence" variant is also available for ordered processing.

File Matcher

Use it for: gating — checking whether files exist before doing work.

If matching files are found, the job continues to the next task. If no files match, the job stops (and, for a scheduled job, tries again at the next run). Typical use: "if there is a new *.837 file, then split / translate / send it — otherwise wait for the next cycle."

FTP

Use it for: sending or receiving EDI files with trading partners over FTP, FTPS (SSL), or SFTP (SSH).

Notes:

• Send uploads all files matching the pattern from the local directory.
• Receive downloads matching files into the local directory; if nothing is found, the job stops and waits for the next scheduled run (a common polling pattern: Receive → File Matcher → process).
• Connections tolerate self-signed certificates.

Pause

Use it for: waiting between steps — e.g. give an external system time to finish writing files.

Log

Use it for: writing a marker line into the job's log — useful to mark phases in a long job.

XTranslator 2.x

Use it for: running an XTranslator 2.x map to translate EDI documents into other formats (or vice versa) — the core translation step of many EDI pipelines.

Make sure you have XTranslator 2.x installed and point XTranslator task to xtranrun.exe program.

Setup XTranslator task.

When job fails it will show red dot next to both job and task. Check logs to get more information.

EDI File Split

Use it for: splitting a multi-order X12 file (many ISA…IEA interchange envelopes in one file) into one file per envelope, so downstream tasks can process each document individually.

Each output file contains one complete ISA…IEA interchange. Segment counts inside the envelope are normalized so the split files remain valid X12.

EDI File Copy

Use it for: copying X12/EDI files based on their envelope contents — e.g. route all documents for receiver ACME to their folder.

The file's ISA envelope is read and compared against these filters. Fill in only the fields you want to filter on; leave * for "any".

EDI File Move

Identical to EDI File Copy except that matching files are moved (removed from the source folder) instead of copied. Use it to route inbound EDI files to per-trading-partner folders in one step.

EDI Concepts

XT Server works with X12 EDI files. The key concepts:

• Interchange envelope — every X12 file starts with an ISA segment and ends with an IEA segment. The ISA header carries the sender ID, receiver ID, control number, and version/release.
• Multi-order files — one physical file may contain many interchanges back-to-back. Use EDI File Split to break it into single-interchange files.
• Envelope-based routing — EDI File Copy / Move inspect the ISA header, so you can route files by who sent them and who receives them without opening the transaction content.
• Translation — the XTranslator 2.x task applies a map that converts EDI documents to/from flat files, XML, or other formats.
• Typical inbound pipeline — FTP (Receive) → File Matcher → EDI File Split → XTranslator 2.x → File Move (archive).
• Typical outbound pipeline — File Matcher → XTranslator 2.x (build EDI) → EDI File Copy (by receiver) → FTP (Send).

Options

The Options dialog has one setting:

Tips and Troubleshooting

• Job won't do anything? Make sure it's started (Start button) and, for scheduled jobs, that a schedule preset is selected in the job editor.
• Nothing processed from a folder? Check the file pattern (*.edi vs *.*) and the directory path. Use the File Matcher task and the Log task to see what is (not) being found.
• Files vanished after a move? File Move and EDI File Move remove the source file. Copy first if you need to keep originals.
• Same folder for input and output? Never point XTranslator input and output to the same directory — output files would be picked up as new inputs.
• Job stopped after the first task? The File Matcher task intentionally stops the job when nothing matches, and FTP Receive stops when the server has no files. That is expected behavior for polling jobs.
• Missing e-mail alerts? If "Send only on error" is checked, mail goes out only when the job actually hits an error.
• Too much log noise? Lower the log limit in Options, or turn off Verbose log output in the job editor.
• Multi-order files processed one-by-one? Insert EDI File Split before per-document tasks.